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Sunday, March 5, 2017

post surgery ankle update

(Content note: I'm going to talk about the surgery and other medical things.)

So I mentioned how going off hormones to reduce risk of blodclot has fucked over my mood, right?

Well, that combined with other things kind of had me fairly messed up by the time surgery came around. I'd barely slept, I was apparently dehydrated, and it had been a lot longer since I'd had a good meal than the required fasting period.

The surgery was actually a day earlier than expected because . . . Jasper? So on Thursday morning I got dropped of at the hospital, early in the afternoon they had me get ready for surgery, and it was into the night before I got out.

You sleep through it, but waking up involves reconnecting with your body, which involves a lot of pain. They have, after all, cut into you, fucked with your bones, and made internally vulnerable to attacks from Magneto.

To keep you from accidentally being killed off by the anesthesia they shove a tube down your throat. My throat was already out of sorts because I'd recovered from being sick in some way or other but, as often happens to me, the cough had lingered. My voice was kind of gravelly going in. It was a photo-realistic depiction of gravel coming out. It was also dry beyond belief.

I did manage to get some food and drink before going to "bed" on a couch-like-thing at my sister's house. (The nurses wouldn't let me go home, because I'd be the only human type person there.) I didn't sleep. I'd run out of sleep med in the lead up to the surgery. Not like I could walk over and get it, maybe when I was stronger and lighter but when you're on the fatter and weaker side of things crutches are downright exhausting. (I've never really been on the fat and strong or light and weak sides.)

As for getting someone to go and get it for me, phone calls are really hard and my mood being thrown out of whack really messed up any . . . I wouldn't even call them "attempts". Plans I guess. It messed up any plans to do that.

I managed to get the sleeping medication picked up for me when I was driven home

That was Friday, which was spent in a lot of pain until I realized that much of the pain wasn't directly caused by the surgery. I was elevating too much and cutting off circulation to my left foot, and to a lesser extent the rest of the leg on the foot-side of the knee, downright dangerously.

The majority of the pain was because my leg was acting like it was freezing, and I somehow didn't notice that because it had shot straight passed the point where it could feel cold. In fact, the parts in pain were the only parts that could feel anything, the rest was numb. My circulation would appear to suck. At least the way in which it sucks isn't indicative of a blood clot.

Any progress made at this time was, almost certainly, undone by the necessary returning of warmth and circulation to my leg. Ideally you're supposed to keep things like that away from heat as it makes swelling worse, but oh my fucking god did my leg need to be warmed by the time I realized what was going on.

Then I slept. One night's sleep isn't enough to get things fixed, and so yesterday is kind of hazy, and it was hazy at the time.

I ordered pizza. It's way too expensive and I can't use food money to pay for a delivery, but right now I need food that has minimal preparation. Unfortunately it can't last for long. Even if I have something else for breakfast, which I didn't today, two large pizzas at two pieces a meal only lasts for four days.

Today I woke up and . . . have basically no idea what happened next. It didn't stick. Around noon I woke up again, but in a different place. That I slept in daylight is indicative of just how little sleep I had leading up to this.

When I sleep at Lonespark's it involves pulling the shade, closing the door, and putting something over the alarm clock because the glow from the clock will keep me up. Since limited mobility has forced me to abandon my usual sleeping spot, I've been laying something over my eyes while I get to sleep. Once I am asleep it's easier to stay that way than it was to get that way, so the fact that the makeshift blindfold always falls off isn't too much of a problem. (Also I don't have a bed to roll around on in new-location and restricting movement makes a blindfold less problematic.)

But to fall back asleep, without even trying, in a room with two unblinded windows connecting me to the sunny outside world, that's kind of absolute proof that I'd really fucked up the whole sleep thing before two nights ago.

And now, here we are. The story reached the present.

I'm elevating my foot more cautiously, now that I'm in the habit of taking the post operation pain-med (and remembering that it has to be used in combination with acetaminophen) the actual surgery related pain is under control, and I'm still limited in what I can do by the need to elevate my ankle as much as possible without doing the whole "no circulation to my left leg" thing.

It's kind of hard to believe the surgery was just three days ago and I only got home two days ago, it feels like forever,